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Governor orders immediate end to indoor dining as coronavirus surges in California By Bay City News Service
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ndoor activities across California must be reined in as the state combats a resurgence of the COVID-19 coronavirus, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. The state ordered all 53 counties to close indoor activities at restaurants, wineries, movie theaters, zoos, museums, card rooms and all bars. The new order has a stark impact on San Mateo County, which on June 17 reopened most businesses that Newsom said must shut down. Santa Clara County did not initially appear to be as dramatically affected by the updated order, since it has not permitted indoor operations of most businesses. Each county on the state’s coronavirus monitoring list — which now includes Santa Clara County, according to a press release sent out at 4:30 p.m. Monday, July 13 — must also
close gyms, places of worship, offices in non-critical sectors, hair and nail salons and indoor malls in addition to the statewide closure. Monday was the first day those businesses had been allowed to reopen. “The state confirmed this afternoon that it will require sectors closed for indoor operations in counties on the monitoring list to close in Santa Clara County effective Wednesday, July 15, 2020 at 12:01 a.m. We wanted to share this information with businesses and residents as soon as possible,” the county Public Health Department said in the email. The 30-plus counties on the monitoring list make up roughly 80% of the state’s population, according to Newsom. “We’re seeing an increase in the spread of the virus, so that’s why it’s incumbent upon all of us to recognize, soberly, that See GOVERNOR, page 8
Magali Gauthier
Richard Fekete heads out the door of Alice’s Restaurant with his to-go order in Woodside on March 20. Under a state order issued Monday, indoor dining is not allowed, negating a San Mateo County order that allowed restaurants to reopen with safety precautions in place.
Nearly half of San Mateo County’s COVID-19 cases are among Latinx or Hispanic residents By Kate Bradshaw Almanac Staff Writer
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hroughout San Mateo County and across the U.S., it’s becoming increasingly clear that COVID-19 is hitting some communities harder than others. In San Mateo County, the new coronavirus is hitting residents who are Latinx or Hispanic at the highest rates of any racial or ethnic group, and the number of cases compared to the number of residents is the greatest in East Palo Alto. As of July 10, there were 111 confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 10,000 residents, or about 1% of all
residents infected. Just under 49% of the county’s confirmed COVID-19 cases are among residents who identify as Latinx or Hispanic. According to data available Tuesday, July 14, out of 4,168 total cases, 2,034 of them were among Latinx or Hispanic residents. Yet Latinx or Hispanic residents represent 24% of the population overall in San Mateo County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And in North Fair Oaks, a community of nearly 15,000 people in an unincorporated area between Atherton and Redwood City that is about 70%
Hispanic or Latinx, the number of COVID-19 cases reported by the county has remained less than 10 since numbers began to be reported. Across the U.S., Latinx and Black residents have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, and Black and Latinx people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported by the New York Times. The Almanac contacted local experts and leaders to dive deeper into the data San Mateo County is reporting and explore
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why the rates might be so high among Latinx residents. Possible underreporting
The San Mateo County Health Department did not provide a clear explanation for why the case count has remained static in North Fair Oaks while it has continued to escalate rapidly in neighboring communities with significant Hispanic or Latinx populations, such as East Palo Alto, where they represent 62% of the population, and Redwood City, where they represent 37% of the population. East Palo Alto Mayor Regina Wallace Jones did not respond
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to a request for comment. Everardo Rodriguez, chairman of the North Fair Oaks Community Council, said he suspected that not many immigrants and Latinx people in North Fair Oaks are getting tested, despite the fact that the county has recently been running a pop-up COVID-19 testing facility in the neighborhood at Everest Public High School, two days a week. The testing site has been busy, according to San Mateo County Supervisor Warren Slocum and a county worker at the testing center who asked See COVID-19 CASES, page 14